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Britain's Most Evil Killers - Season 10 Episode 5 -
Philip Heggarty
Philip Heggarty
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FunTranscript
00:00On the 14th of April, 2003,
00:06police in the Welsh capital of Cardiff
00:08were called to the scene of a car on fire.
00:13They soon realized that in the back seat
00:16there was a dead body wrapped in a carpet.
00:19Now it's clear that this was a murder
00:22and that whoever committed the murder
00:24took the precaution of setting fire
00:27to the car and the body in it.
00:30Investigators soon identified the victim
00:34as 41-year-old Derek Bennett
00:36and the number one suspect
00:38was Derek's friend, Philip Hegarty.
00:42For the people around Hegarty,
00:44they instinctively felt there were problems with him
00:48but couldn't possibly have known how much danger they were in.
00:51The evidence against Hegarty was strong
00:54but the 48-year-old refused to admit his guilt.
01:00Hegarty walked past me and he just looked at me
01:02and he said, I promise you, I didn't do it.
01:05Driven by violence and greed,
01:08Hegarty was willing to kill someone he called a friend,
01:11undoubtedly making him one of Britain's most evil killers.
01:16When Philip Hegarty was arrested in 2005,
01:27When Philip Hegarty was arrested in 2003
01:46for the murder of his friend Derek Bennett,
01:48it was a shock to everyone who knew them both,
01:52including Derek's partner, Colleen.
01:57It's just unbelievable.
02:00You just don't believe it's true until you're going through it.
02:07Even though Derek knew some of Phil's criminal history,
02:09he didn't have a bad word to say about him.
02:12I suppose that's the show that he put on for him.
02:18Hegarty tried to deny murder,
02:21but the case was built on a wealth of forensic evidence.
02:25There was blood spatter in the basement.
02:29There was blood on the sofa where Derek had been murdered.
02:34There was blood on Hegarty's clothes.
02:36The evidence was overwhelming.
02:41When Hegarty was found guilty at his trial in July 2004,
02:46the judge decided that the 49-year-old career criminal
02:50would become one of around 70 prisoners in the UK
02:53with a whole life tariff.
02:57Handing down a whole life tariff is not going to be something
03:00that the judge is going to take lightly.
03:02I can only imagine the judge had his reasons.
03:07For the murder of his friend,
03:09Hegarty will never see beyond the prison walls.
03:12This killer's story begins in Cardiff in 1955.
03:19Little is known about Hegarty's formative years,
03:22but he appeared to have been on the wrong path
03:25from an early age.
03:27Hegarty was a difficult little boy, there's no doubt of that.
03:31I think he had a mean streak very early on,
03:34and it came out as soon as he got to 10 or 11.
03:37He started stealing from the neighbours,
03:40and he became progressively more belligerent.
03:44He was a career criminal from such a young age,
03:48and that does predict that he will probably carry on
03:52that pattern throughout his life.
03:55As Hegarty grew older, his crimes only escalated.
04:00In his 20s, he went on to become a particularly violent
04:07and nasty handbag snatcher.
04:09He used to creep up behind old ladies, punch, hit or kick them,
04:15and then run away, taking the money.
04:20He only chose people who he thought were vulnerable or weaker than him.
04:26He's become increasingly violent.
04:30Violence works for him.
04:32Why would you pick on elderly women
04:34if you didn't have that mean and violent streak?
04:40In 1987, 32-year-old Hegarty was charged
04:44with yet another robbery offence.
04:46And this time, it was even more violent.
04:51He was arrested for beating up a taxi driver.
04:57In fact, so badly the poor driver had to go to hospital.
05:00Hegarty's persistent law-breaking meant he was regularly
05:06in and out of prison.
05:08By May 1988, he was back on the streets of Cardiff once again.
05:13He, at that time, had a bit of a part-time job measuring people
05:22for suits.
05:25And one day, he returned to the home of a retired estate agent,
05:29knocked on the door and said,
05:30oh, I've come to take some more measurements for your suit.
05:36But when he got inside the house, he beat his victim about the head
05:40with a cat-scratching post.
05:43He terrorised him, he tortured him.
05:46He put a knife to his throat.
05:48He slashed his face.
05:51Looking for money, he got away with 60 pounds and a bank card,
05:57put a plastic bag, a bin liner, over his victim's head
06:01and left him for dead.
06:03What's escalating is the amount of gratuitous violence
06:13that he is using.
06:14So I think it's the violence that is the real driver here.
06:21After the horrendous attack, Hegarty assumed the man was dead.
06:26But the retired estate agent managed to call the police
06:29and was later able to identify Hegarty as his attacker.
06:36Arrested and put on trial at Newport Crown Court,
06:40the 33-year-old was charged with attempted murder,
06:43wounding with intent and robbery.
06:46But Hegarty denied it all.
06:50He did his absolute best to wriggle out of being anywhere
06:54near the crime.
06:55Hegarty spun a web of lies.
07:00He maintained that he was drinking with female friends.
07:05He maintained that he took one of his friends
07:08to pick up their daughter from school.
07:14On the stand, when asked if he'd been at the victim's house
07:18that day, he responded, certainly not.
07:21The evidence against Hegarty, I think, was compelling.
07:29But Hegarty's not the kind of person
07:32that is bothered by things like guilt.
07:35So he's going to use everything in his power
07:38to try and get out of it.
07:42The prosecution had one thing that Hegarty
07:45couldn't wriggle out of.
07:47The victim himself had clearly identified him.
07:50It was all lies.
07:55And he was convicted of attempted murder,
07:58wounded with intent.
08:03He gets a sentence of 15 years
08:06for the attack on this elderly man.
08:09He only serves 10 years of the 15.
08:14Newly released after his time in prison,
08:16the now 43-year-old Philip Hegarty relocated
08:20to the south coast of England.
08:24When he came out of prison, he would have been,
08:27in my opinion, possibly worse than when he went in.
08:30And he was bad enough when he went in.
08:32On his release, Hegarty returns to his old ways.
08:37Robbery, theft.
08:39At one point, he goes to Dorset
08:41and starts stealing television sets
08:43and all sorts of other things
08:45and doesn't see any point in earning a living.
08:48He'll make it by theft.
08:49I just don't think he recognized authority.
08:53He was the one who was going to do whatever he liked.
08:58By the early 2000s, Hegarty had a long list of charges
09:04to his name.
09:05He decided to move back to Cardiff,
09:08where he resumed an old friendship
09:12with a man called Derrick Bennett.
09:18At the time, Derrick was living with his partner, Colleen.
09:23I met Derrick while out with my work colleagues
09:26for just a night out.
09:28He walked me home, never left.
09:32He was a very charming, lovable rogue,
09:36as my mum used to call him.
09:39Derrick was so family-oriented.
09:48He always seemed so happy.
09:50He was never judgmental.
09:51Just basically happy that he had his life with his family
09:56and Derrick loved everything to do with family.
09:59Colleen and Derrick both already had children,
10:04and together they had a son, forming a blended family.
10:10One day, they were out in Cardiff
10:12when they bumped into an old friend.
10:17Derrick had met Hegarty a few years before I'd met him.
10:22I only met him when we walked into a joke shop.
10:25We were on our shopping trips in town.
10:28And Hegarty was working there.
10:31That's how Hegarty came back into his life.
10:35And every now and again, Hegarty would go to football with him,
10:38go out drinking with him.
10:41The two bonded over their love of drink
10:44and their love of Cardiff City,
10:46and they were seen together a lot of the time going to matches.
10:52Derrick even had a key to Hegarty's flat
10:55his flat in the Grangetown area of Cardiff.
10:57He'd go there to hang out with Hegarty.
11:02At the time I'd known Hegarty,
11:04I'd known he'd been in and out of prison.
11:07But at the time, I never knew what for.
11:12Hegarty seemingly hid his crimes from those around him,
11:16but Colleen was still wary.
11:21Whenever Derrick would come back from seeing Phil,
11:24I'd feel that he was just trying to poison his mind
11:27against everything.
11:31Whether it be our little family or something else.
11:35And when he'd come back home,
11:36and he'd be sullen and upset, and he wouldn't talk,
11:41and you could see anger in the eyes.
11:45It's quite possible that Derrick was wary of him.
11:50All his instincts were telling him
11:52that he didn't really want to be around this guy.
11:58I do believe that Hegarty probably gave out that vibe,
12:02because he wouldn't have the skills to make people trust him.
12:07Every time Phil's name was mentioned,
12:12I'd say, oh, please don't tell me he's coming.
12:14It's such a chill that would go down my spine,
12:17but never pinpointing why.
12:22The thought of being in the same room,
12:24it'd make my skin crawl.
12:25I'd never put my finger on it,
12:27so I'd try not to be left alone with him.
12:33What Colleen didn't know
12:35was that this was a man now facing serious debts.
12:40In the past, Hegarty had always resorted to crime
12:44to solve his financial problems.
12:47But in the early months of 2003,
12:50his debts were growing and growing,
12:53and he needed to do something to solve that problem.
12:58He was becoming increasingly more dangerous
13:01to the people that he actually knew,
13:05because this was a man who enjoyed violence.
13:11Derek and Hegarty's friendship continued,
13:14and in April 2003, they went to a party together.
13:19On the surface, it was two friends out on a Friday.
13:23But only one of them would make it home alive.
13:31In April 2003, Philip Hegarty was living in Cardiff
13:41and had rekindled a friendship
13:44with 41-year-old Derek Bennett.
13:50By 2003, Hegarty has a string of violent convictions to his name,
13:53and it was inevitable that he would use violence again.
13:59For the people around Hegarty,
14:01they probably instinctively felt there were problems with him,
14:06but couldn't possibly have known how much danger they were in.
14:14On Monday, the 14th of April, police received a 999 call
14:19informing them that a car was on fire in the Wychurch area of Cardiff.
14:25The fire brigade arrive, put the fire out,
14:28but then discover inside a body wrapped in a rug.
14:33They have no idea who the body is.
14:36They have no idea whose car it is.
14:38It's simply a burnt body in a car.
14:42The intriguing case landed on the desk of DS Martin Lloyd Evans.
14:47I hadn't long come home from work,
14:50and it was about 9 o'clock on a Monday evening.
14:53I had a phone call just telling me that a body had been found
14:56in a burnt-out car in a car park in Wychurch.
15:00I remember people couldn't quite believe
15:03that such a horrific thing had happened within that community.
15:09A battered body wrapped in a carpet
15:12in the back seat of a blazing car in the middle of Wychurch.
15:16That doesn't happen very often.
15:20As head of homicide, Martin was quick to assess the scene.
15:27There was a body in the back seat, wrapped in something.
15:31You couldn't say it was male or female.
15:34Everything was protected by what was seen to be
15:37some sort of blanket or material over the body,
15:40but you could see the person's head and you could see their arm.
15:44We could see the feet were bound together with a bath towel.
15:49On the top of the head had been placed a pillowcase.
15:55And then the person had wrapped in this carpet.
15:58The jumper, it was a reddish jumper with black stripes on it.
16:02Martin and his team began to look for clues as to what had happened
16:07and found two witnesses who saw the fire start.
16:10They didn't even smell smoke or see anything coming from the car
16:15when they parked quite near to it.
16:16They'd only literally got into a club upstairs to the snooker room
16:20a matter of minutes when they look out and see this car ablaze.
16:24Nobody remembers when the car was put there.
16:27No-one remembers seeing anybody running away from it.
16:30It's a complete mystery.
16:32Reaching an impasse with the witnesses,
16:35Martin used his detective instincts to ascertain whether or not
16:39he was at an active murder scene.
16:42My suspicions were aroused when I saw this browny-red fluid
16:46in the water that had washed out from the car.
16:49A crime scene examiner at the scene tested it,
16:52and, in fact, it was blood.
16:55Now it's clear that this was a murder
16:58and that whoever committed the murder
17:01took the precaution of setting fire to the car and the body in it
17:05in an attempt to cover his or her tracks.
17:09One thing was clear.
17:11The killer had attempted to destroy all the evidence,
17:15but they'd overlooked something.
17:18Whoever put the victim in the back of that Renault Laguna
17:22had made a fatal mistake.
17:23They'd shut the door's windows so that there wasn't enough oxygen
17:27for the fire to burn really fiercely.
17:31And although the facial features had been destroyed,
17:34a lot of the body was still intact.
17:39Because the body was cocooned in the carpet,
17:42it actually was protected from the fire.
17:44You could see that it was a male, probably aged about 45.
17:50But what was significant on the right-hand side of the temple,
17:56you could see that the person had suffered a number of blunt trauma
17:59to the right side of their head.
18:01Given there were no witnesses, police worked on the theory
18:05these blows to the head happened elsewhere
18:08and the body had been transported in the car.
18:11They managed to track down the registered owner
18:14to see if he could answer their questions.
18:17What he said is that he'd sold the car some six weeks before
18:21to a guy that he'd met in a public house.
18:24All he knew, this guy was called Dell,
18:27and he was a Cardiff City supporter.
18:29But who was this Dell?
18:32This is where the media can be really helpful.
18:37They had a name.
18:38They knew he was referred to as Dell,
18:41but really that's all they had.
18:43The day after discovering the body
18:46and armed with nothing more than the name Dell,
18:50South Wales police held a press conference
18:52to appeal to the public for information.
18:56At the press conference, I released some certain information,
19:00and watching the television was Dell's brother.
19:03And he came forward and said he recognized the cars
19:06belonging to his brother, Derek, known as Dell.
19:11So now, we had our victim, Derek Bennett.
19:20The last time I saw Derek, we'd had a lovely day out,
19:24we'd had food, and then he was coming back
19:27and he was getting changed to go out
19:28and celebrate a birthday with his brother
19:32and a few of their mates.
19:36Colleen knows he went out on Friday night,
19:38and she hasn't heard from him by Sunday,
19:41and it's beginning to be really worrying.
19:51I was drinking a cup of coffee,
19:53and I had a knock on the door,
19:55and it was Derek's sister-in-law and niece,
19:59saying they've been in contact with the police,
20:02and something's happened to Derek,
20:04and I needed to phone him straight away.
20:09And I laughed.
20:11Don't be stupid.
20:13I just laughed.
20:17And when I phoned, I went to Peter's.
20:19So it just, things from there on are spotty and grainy.
20:38Investigators had to tell Colleen the devastating news.
20:43Derek had been murdered,
20:45and they didn't know who was responsible.
20:48I think it's a mixture of confusion and shock
20:52rolled into one.
20:53It's pure sadness.
20:55A life taken.
20:57Children not seeing their father again.
21:00Colleen had to break the news to her children.
21:03Their dad wouldn't be coming home.
21:06I just said some bad man had heard Derek,
21:10and Derek's not coming back.
21:12And one of my daughters at the time said,
21:16can I go and see him in a balloon with a basket?
21:19Well, child's imagination, eh?
21:22Well, child's imagination, eh?
21:31The police asked us all to leave the house
21:33so that they can search their place,
21:36just basically to rule out me as a suspect.
21:40That's the only way you can put it.
21:42I spoke to Derek's partner in several days of the murder taking place.
21:50She, in fact, was a great source of, of information for us.
21:54Wanted to find out who had killed her partner.
21:58And, uh, she assisted us no end in that regard.
22:05Police were determined to find out
22:07who was responsible for Derek's brutal murder.
22:10The post-mortem gave them some of the answers
22:13they'd been looking for.
22:14Well, it was clear that the cause of death
22:17was, uh, blunt trauma to the right-hand side of Derek's body.
22:22He'd been hit a minimum of six times with a blunt object,
22:25probably a hammer, I would have thought.
22:27..which had caused the skull to shatter in numerous pieces.
22:37And that's what killed him.
22:40At least six blows,
22:41that means the first blow wasn't enough for this person.
22:46And they continued, probably,
22:49until he was completely incapacitated or even dead.
22:57So, you know, what happened to Derek's body?
22:59You know, what happened to Derek's body?
23:00You know, what happened to Derek's body?
23:01Investigators established that Colleen last saw Derek
23:05on the Friday night.
23:07They spoke to the people that Derek had been out with
23:10to try and establish a timeline.
23:12He'd been out, he'd been visiting a number of public houses in Cardiff,
23:17with his brother and a number of other people.
23:20Ending up, then, in a nightclub in Cardiff,
23:23and then, in the early hours, then, of the Saturday morning,
23:26going to a house party in the Rumley area of the city.
23:29It seemed, from those investigations,
23:34that the last sighting of Derek was on the early hours
23:37of the Saturday morning.
23:43Derek's brother told police that Derek had left the party
23:46around 6.30 in the morning.
23:49He'd left in a friend's car,
23:51that of 48-year-old Philip Hegarty.
23:57Philip Hegarty, he was driving the car,
23:59and Derek was sitting in the car,
24:01together with Derek's brother.
24:03And they went to the petrol station and they bought petrol.
24:07We recovered the CCT footage,
24:10and we could see that Derek was wearing that red top
24:13with the black stripes on it.
24:16And that top is on the charred body in the car,
24:20which means he was probably killed not long afterwards.
24:25Investigators were now certain that Derek Bennett had been murdered
24:29in the early hours of Saturday morning,
24:31and the last person seen with him was Philip Hegarty.
24:35The 48-year-old was now the main suspect,
24:38but was it truly conceivable that Derek's good friend was also his killer?
24:44In April 2003, 41-year-old Derek Bennett was found murdered on the back seat of his own burnt-out car.
25:01He was last seen driving through Cardiff after leaving a party with his friend, Philip Hegarty.
25:07As the last person to see him alive and with a violent track record,
25:12police needed to speak to Hegarty to get his account of that fateful Friday evening.
25:18He claimed that Derek Bennett hadn't been to his house,
25:27that he'd dropped him off at the international arena.
25:32He'd gone one way, he'd gone another. He hadn't seen him since. Simple as that.
25:36And he was quite happy to tell us all that he knew or wanted us to know.
25:43He's setting the narrative about who he is.
25:46He knows that he's got a really, really long criminal past with violence,
25:54so he's obviously going to come onto the radar.
25:59Hegarty was the prime suspect, but investigators had no solid evidence against him.
26:05Martin spoke to witnesses about Hegarty's movements after Derek's murder.
26:20On a Saturday, he should have gone to work. He didn't. He took the day off.
26:24He used to work in a call center. He just didn't show up and ran in sick on that particular day.
26:30He had a car that, yet three days later, he scrapped it and bought another car.
26:37Now, this is a man that didn't have any money. He seemed to be in possession of quite a substantial
26:42sum of money. He paid off a number of debts that he borrowed to people that he worked with.
26:46Martin started to work on the theory that Hegarty could have stolen money from Derek,
26:55but he had no proof. Whilst detectives looked into this motive,
27:00Hegarty was making sure to pay his condolences to Derek's family.
27:05In the days that followed, Hegarty came over and he'd just sit in my house with his feet on my
27:22chairs. He'd sit down and start crying. Why did someone take my friend? What happened? Why?
27:31I felt so uncomfortable and I just didn't want to be there with him. I just needed him gone.
27:42He was desperately trying to portray himself as somebody trustworthy who couldn't possibly
27:49have been involved in this. He was offering up his sofa when one of the family needed that.
27:56This was a man who simplistically thought, if I look like a nice guy,
28:03everybody will think I'm a nice guy, so nobody is going to point the finger at me.
28:12Investigators believed Derek was murdered in a different location to where his body was found.
28:19Martin decided to bring Hegarty back into the police station for an interview.
28:24And whilst he was there, they obtained a warrant to search his home.
28:29What the police didn't have in the wake of the discovery of the body in the car,
28:35was where the crime took place. And so they're looking for a crime scene.
28:39And one potential crime scene would be Philip Hegarty's flat.
28:46The detectives went to his house to do a cursory search.
28:48So he lived in a rented accommodation, ground floor flat. When they looked around that house,
28:55they found Derek's bum bag where he kept his money.
28:59Finding Derek's empty money bag backed up the theory that Hegarty had stolen cash from his friend.
29:09But investigators needed a lot more if they were going to prove murder.
29:14One major thing the police discovered in their search of Hegarty's flat was a speck, literally, of blood on the wall.
29:27We took a sample of the blood, but in the blood was a fingerprint. And that fingerprint belonged to Philip Hegarty.
29:34Martin didn't know who the blood belonged to yet, but he suspected it would turn out to be Derek's.
29:42He decided to follow his hunch and arrest Hegarty on suspicion of murder.
29:47Now he was against the clock to prove it.
29:53I decided then to fast track the blood we'd found at the scene and dispatched it to the forensic
29:58science service who came back, a DNA profile of Derek Bennett. So we've got Philip Hegarty's
30:05fingerprint and Derek Bennett's blood at his scene. Police could now formally charge Hegarty with murder,
30:13but he continued to deny it. Without a confession, investigators knew they would have to find even
30:21more evidence. They started with a full forensic search of the flat.
30:31As the scientists carried out a more detailed search of the lounge, there was a leather setting
30:36underneath the bookcase. Then underneath the bookcase were small droplets of blood. And once you found one,
30:43we found loads of them. And it was quite clear, this was the spray from where he struck Derek Bennett.
30:52And the blood had splattered over the wall in minute spots.
30:57The blood spray indicates to the police that Derek was probably asleep on the sofa when he was attacked.
31:05Shockingly, this was the very same sofa that Hegarty had let Derek's grieving son stay on in the days
31:16after the murder. The evidence all pointed towards Derek being killed in Hegarty's flat. Now they wanted
31:25to see if they could link him to the carpet that Derek's body was wrapped in.
31:29As we continued to look in the house, there were signs that it had been cleaned. It was just quite
31:36a dirty flat, but this particular room had a shape of a carpet on the floor, and clearly that had gone
31:43missing. Philip Hegarty had two dogs, took samples from the carpet found at the scene, compared them with
31:51the contents of the vacuum cleaner, which was in Philip Hegarty's house, and they matched.
31:56The evidence against Hegarty continued to mount, but investigators wanted even more. This time,
32:06they honed in on the pillowcase and towel that were found covering Derek's head and body.
32:14I had a phone call of the police officers dealing with Derek's murder, and they asked me if I could go
32:21to the police station to identify some things. When I went down there, I identified pillowcases and towels,
32:29and I only knew they were from me, because a couple of months previously, Hegarty asked me if I had any
32:35spare bedding, so I sorted out where I had, and I gave it to him.
32:39The gathering of evidence in this case was probably one of the best cases. Everything just came together
32:48to make a complete picture, pointing to only one person that committed this crime, which was Philip
32:53Hegarty. Derek's family were shocked to discover that the man charged with his murder was someone
33:01that they all knew and had invited into their homes.
33:08Never suspected Hegarty at all. Why would you suspect someone who's coming to visit you?
33:15Why would you suspect them of them being a killer?
33:18Faced with a murder charge and a solid forensic case, Hegarty still refused to admit to killing his friend.
33:34And at his upcoming trial, he was going to try and get away...
33:40...with murder.
33:48In 2003, Philip Hegarty was charged with the murder of Derek Bennett,
33:56but despite the overwhelming forensic evidence against him, Hegarty refused to admit to killing
34:03his friend. As the prosecution prepared for the upcoming trial, they used the evidence to paint a
34:09picture of exactly what happened between the two friends on the night of Derek's murder.
34:15We know that Derek had gone to Hegarty's flat and was lying face down on the sofa, sleeping off this
34:26very boozy night. We can only suppose that Hegarty thought, this is my chance to get some money. He knew
34:36that Derek had around £3,000 with him. I think it's something he just took advantage of the situation.
34:45That he found himself in. But he was a danger, a danger to everybody and almost like a ticking time bomb,
34:51waiting for an opportunity to, to get what he wanted, using force if necessary. And that's what he did.
34:58Hegarty had been violent in the past, but this attack went further.
35:03It may look on the surface as if he just wanted to rob him. He did not need to kill Derek to rob him.
35:19This was a very frenzied, brutal killing, straight from the Hegarty playbook.
35:24What he did was he beat his so-called best friend around the head.
35:36He had a slow and painful death. It took Derek one and a half hours to die.
35:42And all the time Hegarty was there by his side.
35:49This is an out of the blue anger from Hegarty, probably driven by his need to pay off his debts,
35:56but also out of envy.
35:58Hegarty refused to admit to the murder, let alone a motive for it.
36:11But it seemed clear that money was at the centre of the vicious attack.
36:17He was skint. He owed people money all over Cardiff.
36:22On the day of the murder and days following, he paid off a lot of his debts with money that
36:29he'd got from Derek. Witnesses describe him as being flush with money.
36:35It didn't seem to occur to him that somebody might say,
36:39where did that money come from? You've been in debt for ages.
36:43How have you suddenly got the means to pay that off?
36:49I just don't think Hegarty is very clever.
36:59Not only did investigators believe Hegarty murdered his so-called friend,
37:04but they also believed he took multiple steps to try and cover up
37:09what he'd done.
37:11It's clear from the timeline that Derek's body was kept in the flat for some time,
37:18because it was two days later that Derek's body was found in the blazing car in Whitchurch.
37:25This man, I think, enjoys the violence so much, everything else kind of just goes for a blank for him,
37:36and he panics afterwards and just tries to deal with it afterwards in whatever way he can.
37:40Hegarty had committed a very brutal murder. What we know is that he made not terribly successful,
37:49but extensive efforts to clear up the blood to try and cover his tracks, but he had a problem.
37:55He was in a flat in a busy area of Cardiff, and there was a dead body on his sofa.
38:04Philip Hegarty wrapped Derek in the carpet and had to carry it out of his flat to the car in the street,
38:13so he had to hide the feet and hide the head.
38:17Prosecutors believed that in Hegarty's efforts to disguise the crime scene,
38:22he left behind a trail of evidence, which they were now ready to present
38:27to a jury in the courtroom.
38:29In July 2004, the trial began at Swansea Crown Court.
38:43The prosecution had a very good case against Philip Hegarty.
38:48They had all the forensic evidence that scenes of crimes officer had gathered from Hegarty's fat.
38:53The blood, the fibres, the dog hairs from the carpet that was used to wrap Derek's body.
39:01The evidence in this case wasn't just circumstantial, it was overwhelming.
39:11Despite the odds being heavily stacked against him, Philip Hegarty pleaded not guilty.
39:18He did put forward a defence, although it was very, very weak.
39:26He said that there were heavies, drug heavies, that Derek was afraid of,
39:31and they must have come and killed him and murdered him and left his body in a car.
39:37He spent days trying to create false alibis. It was ridiculous.
39:43He also said he didn't know the area of Whitchurch in Cardiff, so how could he possibly leave a dead body
39:50in a blazing car there?
39:52Hegarty would have continued to deny everything whilst there was the slightest chance that he might
39:59have got off. Simple as that.
40:01Derek's partner Colleen sat in the courtroom, hearing Hegarty's passionate denial, day in, day out.
40:10Every day I'd go to the courts in Swansea, and he'd walk past, and they nearly took him back
40:18out of the court because he spoke to me. He just said out loud, I promise you I didn't do it.
40:29After 27 days, the trial concluded, and on the 23rd of July, 2004,
40:36the jury were ready to deliver their verdict.
40:42It only took them a day and a half. They came back into court and told the judge,
40:48Mr. Justice Roderick Evans, that they had a verdict. That verdict was guilty. Hegarty was guilty of murder.
40:58Finally, Philip Hegarty would be back behind bars. When it came to sentencing,
41:04the judge spoke of the 49-year-old's continued duplicity.
41:09Sentencing Hegarty, Mr. Justice Roderick Evans turned to him and said that he was a very dangerous,
41:17violent man, a manipulative and resourceful liar. In Hegarty's case, the judge said,
41:25life should mean life. He imposed a whole life tariff.
41:33Whole life tariffs are reserved only for the most serious of offenders. There's probably only about 70
41:46of them because we only use them in the most extreme circumstances.
41:57When I heard the sentence, I thought, my life can carry on. My life can go,
42:03make a new normal, because my old normal's gone now.
42:06How do you get a new normal? You've got to work hard.
42:15For Derek's family, the ordeal was finally over.
42:22But they would never get their partner and father back.
42:26The two children Derek and I have together, they definitely felt what it's like growing up without a dad.
42:37The younger one has no photos with his dad, no memories, no nothing.
42:43I definitely doesn't heal, but it makes it easier to cope with as well.
42:47So all I've got to do is just keep living my life with my families,
42:55and my life will get where it should be.
43:00Philip Hegarty murdered Derek Bennett with little regard for his friend or his friend's family.
43:09This was a story of a Jekyll and Hyde character who was all short of money and wouldn't stop at
43:16anything to get what he wanted, to get that money.
43:23He's used violence to his advantage throughout his life.
43:27The public should be protected from a man who's entirely capable of violence at a moment's notice.
43:34When Derek said goodbye to Colleen and his children that Friday night,
43:38he couldn't have known what his so-called friend was capable of.
43:42Philip Hegarty brutally murdered Derek for no other reason than pure greed,
43:48which is why Hegarty will forever be remembered as one of Britain's most evil killers.
44:12That's why Hegarty took to the poor and his so-called wife.
44:17And he said goodbye to me so badly,
44:21so he can't kill him until he died.
44:23And he said goodbye to me after that.
44:25But I don't know his so-called friend.
44:27And we're going to be my sister.
44:29This is my sister.
44:31I don't know who he is.
44:33I don't know who he is.
44:34I'm not sure who he is.
44:36I'm not sure who he is.
44:37I'm not sure who he is.
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